KDE 3 or KDE 4?

By Jim on June 12th, 2010

Two and a half years after the KDE 4 series of releases began, many users are still using KDE 3. A preference for the familiar seems to motivate some; while others seem influenced by the rumors that began with the botched 4.0 release. Still others want a feature that the KDE 4 series has yet to implement — or, sometimes, a feature they have been unable to find because of reorganization.

For whatever the reasons, several distributions continue to cater to the preference, including aLinux, Knoppix and MEPIS, all of which offer GNU/Linux with KDE 3.0 as the desktop.

This raises the question: How do the two series of KDE releases compare? The answer is not nearly as simple as you might assume.

The biggest beef I’ve had with KDE 4 is when distros leave the default sliding menus on. I hate them. I really, really do. I don’t mind KDE 4 at all though if it defaults back to the KDE 3 menus. Whoever thought that users would like sliding application menus was completely nuts. Ugh.